Wednesday, November 3, 2010

German Beer is for Parties

So the other day I decided it was time to start brewing for the party I'm planning on having next month. Aafter a few months of not brewing my pipeline had been almost totally epmty. I've partially corrected that by brewing a brown ale, and a black ipa. More on those later. Todays post is about the beer I decided to brew. One which has been my favorite this year...munich helles style german ale.

Why have I begun to enjoy such a beer when my typical beer purchase starts off with, "what ipas do you have on tap..."? - low abv% having a beer on tap in the 4-5% range let's me have a couple and not be too drunk- subtle flavor. While I love being hit over the head with big hops or big malty flavors, sometimes it is nice enjoying the subtle graininess of the pilsner malt almost balanced by the noble hops.- quick turnaround. Grain to glass in under three weeks? Yes please.

I've brewed three (four if you count the one I dumped after sparging. Ugh.) beers in this style this year, and all have used different recipes. The best to date was actually an extract batch using just a pound of munich and pilsner dme. Very tasty. In fact i had numerous people tell me it had amazing flavor for such a light beer at a tasting event.

My hope is that the one brewed yesterday will match or even surpass that batch. On to the recipe, which was done by guesswork since I couldn't remember my google docs password that day to get my last recipe...

Grain - 9 lbs pilsner malt0.5 lbs munich 10l0.5 lbs vienna malt

Hops -0.75 oz Hallertau 60 mins0.5 oz tettnanger 60 mins0.4 oz hallertau flameout (not to style, but the gf liked the smell, which for hops is not common so I though a bit of aroma might not be bad)

Yeast -Wyeast German Ale (I usually use the Kolsch but there was none at the LHBS)

I mashed at 155 for 90 minutes, then had about a 75 min boil. Cooled to 85ish, and left it in the garage for a few hours before pitching (exacting process control lol). Yeast took off like crazy, and is still sitting in the 65f garage.